Talking about seeds

The other morning I heard an interview of Jere Gettle on NPR. Gettle is the founder of Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company, which is where we bought our seeds. Heirloom seeds are "pure" seeds that have not been genetically modified. Baker Creek specializes in seeds from 19th century plants. Through the years, seed companies have decided what seeds to sell and some of the vegetable varieties from the 19th century have been thought extinct. Gettle is working on bringing these varieties back by find farmers who might still be growing them.

You too can save your seeds. Doug and I have already saved seeds from okra and beans. We're going to try to save seeds from other plants. Here are Gettle's tips for saving seeds.

So true

Winter-fresh herbs

Have you ever noticed how expensive fresh herbs are at the grocery store, especially when you just need a tablespoon or more? Definitely makes you want to grow your own. But even in Central Texas, we can't grow some herbs year-round. So how do you have fresh herbs in the winter?

Freeze them. I'll do this with basil, oregano and thyme and may try it with the sage this year (it didn't need it last year). Rosemary is hearty and will grow all year here, so I let it grow.

To freeze, chop the herbs (for example, basil), like you normally would when using. Place the chopped basil into an ice cube tray and freeze. It doesn't take a lot of water, just enough to cover the basil. Once the cubes are frozen, pop them out of the tray and store in a Ziploc bag marked basil (or thyme or whichever herb). Come winter, when you want fresh basil, just take some cubes out of the freezer and let them melt. Fresh basil from the summer.

Yes we can!

For beginning canners (which is probably anyone under the age of 70), You Can Can is a great book to learn about how to can vegetables, fruit, etc. And let's face it, it's a fun title to say. Canning can seem intimidating, but when you spend a lot of time tending your vegetable garden, you want to make the vegetable last longer than a week. While you can freeze much of your produce, it's usually recommend to use frozen produce within six months.

So far we've just canned tomatoes and pickled vegetables -- cucumbers, okra, jalapenos. Hubby loves to snack on pickled okra and jalapenos, so that's his canning of choice.

There are two basic ways to can -- if the items have high acidity, you just need a big pot (we use a turkey fryer). If it's not acidic, like peaches, you have to have a pressure cooker (this is why so far we've stuck to high acidic vegetables). Actually, we did buy a pressure cooker this winter; while it's not big, we could try to can the non-acidic produce, but so far all haven't grown anything we wanted to pressure cook can.

The great thing about You Can Can is that it takes away a lot of the intimidation and you'll soon find out you CAN can.

Did you know...?

Stolen toilet paper taken to my office and shredded.

...that you can compost toilet paper? And paper towels for that matter. Not that I would suggest that you compost toilet paper that's been used for its "intended" purpose. However, when you have dogs that have a habit of getting into and shredding toilet paper, it's good to know that you can compost the remains.

Luckily, I don't have to compost the toilet paper too often, but I do compost paper towels. Some folks may argue that cloth napkins are the way to go, but I would argue that the energy costs for washing and drying versus the ability to compost (and turn into organic material)  paper towels, makes the paper towels the way to go.

One thing, animal products cannot go into the composter. If you use paper towels for things like draining grease off of bacon, those towels can't be put in the composter.

Here's a list of things that can be composted. Among the items is dust/dirt from a vacuum. Great to know.

Under cover plants

August and September in Texas means it's time to plant for the fall harvest. Tomatoes, cucumbers, beans and the like get a second chance when the weather turns cooler. With 72 days of temperatures reaching 100+ degrees, it's difficult to get transplants going. The sun will bake the seeds and transplants before the root system can develop.

One trick -- use shade cloth. Adding shade can help keep the sun off the plants and the soil a little cooler and moister. Here, we are using 60% shade shade cloth. With 13 hours of sunlight a day, and overnight temperatures of 80 degrees, our new plants are getting plenty of sun and seem to be doing well. (You'll notice there is no cloth in the middle -- those are peppers and eggplants planted in the spring and still going. They are well established and don't need the shade).

To put up the shade cloth, we simple hammered metal posts in the ground, placed the shade cloth over the posts and clamped the cloth into place. Using claps is nice because we can easily unclamp and pull the cloth back. You'll wanted to do this when weeding, otherwise you are bent over under the cloth while working on that section.

You probably can't tell, but we've placed plastic bottles over the posts to keep the posts from tearing into the cloth. My husband may be drinking way too much Diet Coke and juice at work, but at least this is a great way to put the bottles to use instead of just recycling. He cut off the tops (which he did recycle) and placed the bottles upside down on the posts.

The other thing we are doing to encourage the garden is we put down a layer of mulch. Many folks are using straw mulch this time of year, but we can get free mulch from the Pflugerville recycling center (on the other side of the wooden fence), so we just use that.

It seems to be working. The beans we planted last week are starting to sprout and the peppers we planted two weeks ago are growing. The eggplants (3-4 weeks ago) look strong. The tomatoes, which we planted with the eggplants, are hanging in there and we're hoping they will really take off soon.

The bee's knees

Really love seeing bees buzzing around my flowers. I know it's a sign of a healthy eco-system. Would like to actually have a small bee house (different from a hive) to attract more bees.